


Surface

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, Castiel (Supernatural) to the Rescue, Close Calls, Dean Winchester to the Rescue, Drowning, Gen, Hugging, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt Sam Winchester, Possessed Castiel, Possessed Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester to the Rescue, Scared Sam Winchester, TFW Hugs, They All Rescue Each Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 11:53:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17549198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: While Dean looks for the object tying a vengeful spirit to Earth, Sam and Cas scope out the only other possible place such an object could be.But maybe being next to a swimming pool while hunting a ghost who likes to drown people isn’t such a great idea.





	Surface

Sam hangs up as Cas pulls in just outside the old hotel, and shakes his head at the angel’s questioning look.

“He’s still working through the stuff in the loft,” Sam says. “It’s gonna take a while, so he says to be careful.”

There’s more than a vengeful spirit to worry about here; the _Happy Traveller_ might not officially be a condemned building but that’s just down to cutbacks leaving nobody to come out here and check the place over.

Not that Sam thinks they’d have to do more than take a quick glance at the building. He’s kind of surprised the noise of Cas’s truck coming up the winding drive didn’t bring the hotel crashing into a cloud of dust before they even got this close.

But they have to go in, because if the object tying the ghost of Susanne Masters to Earth isn’t back in the house Dean’s searching, then it’s here, and she isn’t going to stop killing people.

Or, rather, possessing them and making them kill themselves.

Cas starts towards the door, but Sam’s longer legs get him there first. If the angel realises it’s intentional rather than just Sam having a wider gait, he doesn’t comment.

But the truth of it is, Sam’s determined to keep Cas as sidelined as it’s possible to be while hunting a homicidal spirit.

It’s less than four days since they almost lost Cas, again, and Sam would have passed this hunt up. Dean would have too, but there aren’t exactly a lot of them kicking around now; even though the refugees they’ve trained are out there, helping pick up the slack, it’s just not enough.

Which means when innocent people are dying (and some of them, Sam’s sure, are innocent since Susanne’s already killed the people who killed her and is now avenging herself indiscriminately) so there is no choice.

And Cas insisted. 

Sam isn’t fooled. He knows Cas is still hurt, and weakened; Heaven might be able to cut off an angel, but an angel can’t cut off Heaven, and the sharing of the angelic ‘pool’ of Grace is stealing the strength Cas needs to recover.

They’ve been talking, while Cas is resting, about finding a way to block him off from upstairs. Even temporarily, so he can use his Grace for himself, but it’s a dangerous path to tread.

The wrong spell, or rite, and Cas could end up with no Grace, or just plain dead.

And it’s unlikely he’d give his consent anyway, since he blames himself for there being only a handful of angels left in existence.

Cas has never been one to duck what he feels is his responsibility, even when he’s wrong, either in whole or in part.

They start in the reception, but it’s a bust (unsurprising) and then move to the dining room, the kitchens, the storage area, and then back around to the gym and spa rooms.

One of those doors opens out onto the largest swimming pool Sam’s ever seen. It’s Olympic sized, stretching out in what would probably have been an impressive room maybe forty or so years ago.

But now the walls are cracked and mildewed, and a portion of the ceiling in the far corner has collapsed in, showing through to the floor above.

It’s a wreck.

Not the pool, though. The pool looks like someone’s been in here on a weekly basis, changing the water, polishing the handrails until they gleam.

It’s like liquid blue crystal, and that more than anything else tells him they’ve found where Susanne is right now.

Even more than the way his breath suddenly mists in the air.

“Cas,” he says, because holy shit to do all this, she has to be strong, and then something settles over him, in him, and that’s the last thing he knows.

++

Cas feels the ghost’s presence in the same moment Sam calls his name, but by the time he’s turned around it’s already too late.

He can see her coiling inside Sam, hurt and vicious and bitter. She’s mad with it, unable to tell now the difference between the people who hurt her (that’s she already killed) and anyone else unfortunate enough to cross her path.

“Get out of him,” Cas says, and he’s rewarded with a cold laugh.

“No,” she says, her voice overlaying Sam’s deeper timbre. It’s petty, almost childlike in tone. “I think I’ll drown him instead.”

She takes a step towards the pool, and Cas sidesteps to get between them. He isn’t sure he has Grace enough to revive Sam if she manages to get him in the water, and all he can think is that if he stalls long enough he can either (hopefully) drive her out or give Dean time to burn whatever object is tying her to the mortal plane.

“Get out of the way,” she snarls, and slaps out a backhanded punch that rocks Cas on his heels.

His flesh burns at how cold her touch is, and blood trickles down his face.

“No,” he says, and he’s ready when she grabs for him. He catches hold of her, Sam’s, wrists, and mutters quickly the Enochian command to drive out a possessing spirit.

But his Grace is still tied up in mending him, and he can’t redirect it quickly enough to put the needed force into his words.

She must know it, sense that whatever he’s tried has failed, because she laughs and tries to shove him aside.

Cas hangs on, grimly, because he’s the only thing between Sam and drowning, and he will not lose his brother.

There has to be a way.

And then he realises that there is. Because sometimes it’s easier to pull than push, and Susanne, so desperate to possess someone, can (as Dean would say) do most of the heavy lifting.

He lets down his guard, and her anger and hate washes over him, into him, and he can hear her gasp of surprise as she’s carried right along with it.

++

Dean finds the old journal buried at the bottom of a box of books. He rifles quickly through the pages, and sees enough to know that it’s hers.

Reads enough to know the hell she was put through, and why she killed those first five victims.

But now, like an addict, she can’t stop.

Dean’s going to help her with that.

He runs outside, to the back yard, and dumps the box onto the patio. It takes a moment to squirt lighter fluid over it, another moment to set it on fire, and then he watches as the flames sear and curl the pages, blackening them into scraps that waft upwards and away.

He grabs his phone, dials Sam to tell him it’s over and get the hell out of that hotel before the place comes down around his ears (he thinks maybe even Sam can control his inner geek in a crumbling about to fall down hotel with an injured angel in his care).

But there’s no answer.

There’s no answer to Cas’s phone either, and Dean’s running for his car, trying not to let his fear slow him down.

++

Sam almost hits the floor when Susanne leaves him, recovering his strength and balance just in time to stop himself going down and cracking his skull open on the tiles. (Dean might joke that his hair provides an added layer of protection against all those times somebody’s laid him out cold, but Sam’s starting to worry about cumulative damage and wondering why it's always his head people go for).

He doesn’t have time to grab at Cas before Susanne backs them right off the edge and into the water.

She shoots Cas’s body right into the centre of the pool, and he just...hangs there, two foot at least beneath the surface, and he isn’t moving.

Sam isn’t sure how Cas got Susanne to switch hosts, but he tells himself Cas will be okay.

Angels don’t need air. They don’t breathe, not in the same way as a human. Cas’s body might maintain it’s automatic processes, but that’s because it’s designed to. Cas just lets it, but if he was suddenly deprived of air, he wouldn’t suffer from it.

Because his Grace would just repair any damage caused to the vessel while Cas took care of the problem.

His Grace.

Sam hits the water like a knife, angling in and letting that initial dive thrust him closer to where the angel is.

Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe Cas is keeping _her_ there, aware from him, Sam, to give Dean time.

He’s not trying to get out because he’s fine, he isn’t in danger of drowning.

But the smug look on the angel’s face, that expression doesn’t belong to Cas. 

He _is_ drowning.

Sam isn’t sure what he can do. Susanne could just as easily hold him under too, do them both, with much less effort than it would take Sam to overpower her and drag Cas to the surface.

And then the water starts to flurry and boil. Orange light glows around Cas, and he can see the wispish ghost form screaming silently under the water as whatever was holding it here burns up.

Susanne’s gone a moment later, and the water starts to change. It turns brown and sludgy, as if all the crap she’s kept out of it these past years is getting pumped back in.

If Sam doesn’t move now, he’ll lose Cas in all of this. He strokes fast towards the angel, terrified to note that Cas hasn’t moved at all, and hauls him straight up.

The water is a lot worse when they break the surface. It stinks, and Sam coughs at the foul taste as some of the brackish liquid gets in his mouth.

He doesn’t aim for where Susanne forced Cas in; the long side is closer, and he hauls the angel to it, and then there’s a problem, because they’re both waterlogged, and Cas might be smaller than him, but he’s still six foot and Sam might be strong but he can’t get the leverage to push Cas up and onto the side.

He has to try, though, and it’s ridiculous, the effort pushing them both back under, Cas slipping almost out of his grip, and Sam can’t believe that they’re _both_ going to drown here.

And then two strong hands reach down to grab hold of the angel, and Dean’s hauling him out and dragging him across the tiles until he’s safely away from the water.

Dean starts back for Sam, but Sam’s pulling himself up and out before Dean can reach him, and then they’re both kneeling next to the stricken angel.

“Why isn’t he coming around?” Dean asks. “What happened?”

Sam pants an explanation, and Dean looks once at the water, like he wants to burn that ghost up again, or most likely blaming himself for taking too long to do it at all.

He watches Dean reach down, and touch his fingers below Cas’s jaw, and shake his head.

No pulse. Cas, even unconscious, and bleeding, and wrecked by spells, by poison, by the fucking devil having ownership of his body, always had a pulse.

He isn’t breathing, either. 

So. They’ll just breathe for him.

Sam gets astride the angel, and starts to push down hard on his chest.

“Start rescue breaths,” he orders Dean, when his brother seems frozen. “Dammit, we need to give his Grace a chance!”

Because that’s the problem, Sam’s sure. Cas’s Grace is just...lumbered, with the battering he’s taken. It’s like trying to fight too many fires at once, so they’ll help with this one until it can rally enough to do the job.

And they keep that up, for what seems like an hour, switching out when Dean gets light headed, and Sam’s arms are trembling with the exertion, and they’re not sure how much longer they can go on like this, except they’re not going to stop, they’ll do this for another hour, and another hour after that, until this stupid angel gets his fucking act together and…

Breathes.

Cas sucks in a lungful of air, and coughs, and they turn him so the water from the pool (just as tainted and dark as the rest of it) gets retched up.

Sam’s already thinking antibiotics, maybe even a visit to the ER in case of secondary drowning, just to be safe, but then Dean’s pulling Cas into his arms, and hugging him.

Cas pats weakly at his back, and then he’s looking at Sam, and reaching for him.

“I’m okay,” Sam says, because he can see the fear in Cas’s eyes. “You got her out of me, and then Dean _got_ her and I’m okay.”

Cas’s hand cups his shoulder, and he knows what the angel wants but doesn’t have the strength to do, failing to do more than half tug Sam towards him.

He wraps his arms around both, hugging them and recognising that their combined strength is holding each of the others up, until Dean takes charge again, and has them both on their feet, because they need to get dried off and changed, and then he’s getting them the hell out of dodge.

And home.


End file.
